Touching lives every single day, whether it’s through critical operations that help the businesses of providers or directly to the lives of their patients
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Increase Pharmacy Performance, Build a More Profitable Business with Nimesh Jhaveri, President, Health Mart Pharmacy and Senior Vice President at McKesson was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best way to convert your audio to text in 2019.
Welcome to the Outcomes Rocket podcast, where we inspire collaborative thinking, improved outcomes and business success with today’s most successful and inspiring health care leaders and influencers. And now your host, Saul Marquez.
Saul Marquez:
Welcome back to the podcast, ladies and gentlemen. Today, I have the privilege of hosting an Nimesh Jhaveri. He’s the president of Health Mart and Senior Vice President at McKesson. With 30 years of hands on pharmacy experience, Nim is responsible for developing strategies supporting the goals and success of more than 5000 Health Mart pharmacies, Nim works hard hand-in-hand with independently owned Health Mart pharmacies to help them provide quality health care in their local communities. He began his career as a pharmacy technician and worked his way up to managing several pharmacies before moving to field operations, corporate pharmacy operations, pharmacy systems and health services business development. It’s important to understand what our options are in this field, both as consumers of healthcare and providers. And I thought it’d be a wonderful experience to have Nim on the podcast to help educate us a little bit more about the business and about how he and the group at Health Mart are making a difference. And so, Nim, I want to give you a warm welcome. Thanks for joining us today.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Saul, thank you so much. It’s an absolute pleasure to be on with you.
Saul Marquez:
So, Nim, what would you say is something that I didn’t talk about that you’d want to share with the listeners today?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Well, you know, I always start with who I am, and that’s a proud son, a husband and a father of two fantastic children. And I guess that’s probably the biggest part that defines who I am.
Saul Marquez:
Love it, man. It’s always nice to know your why and kind of why we do what we do. And family is definitely the center for me too, Nim. But, you know, if we hone in deeper on the why of health care. Love to hear what got you into health care and just kind of find a little bit more about you there.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Yeah, no, thanks. You know, health care, it’s one of those sectors in the community that really has a tremendous responsibility of providing care and true empathy. And as you can probably tell, I enjoy speaking to people. I enjoy being around people and had an opportunity to go into pharmacy school at Rutgers University down in New Jersey and never looked back. I’ll tell you, it’s a profession, whether you’re a physician, a nurse, a nurse practitioner, pharmacist. Here’s the real crux of what they do, and that is they touch lives every day. And what more can you absolutely want when you get out of bed every morning is to be able to touch lives for the better. And that’s what the medical sector does. And I am absolutely proud to be a part of it. I’m proud to be a pharmacist and never looked back.
Saul Marquez:
Now, that’s that’s definitely a lot of truth there, Nim. And so as we focus on health care today, as a lot of topics floating out there, value based care, AI. What do you think is a hot topic that really matters and needs to be on health leaders agendas today and how are you guys tackling it?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Assuming health care is complicated in our country? Right..
Saul Marquez:
Just a little bit.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Just little bit.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
But I know there’s a lot going on in health care and pharmacy care and medical care and hospital care. But, you know, the biggest thing that I think should be on everyone’s agenda is what the regulatory and legislative activity is going on. There are a lot of leaders in government, our legislators, that are trying to define how we provide health care through sort of I say the pen, you know, power of legislation. And every provider, again, nurses, pharmacists, physicians, nurse practitioners, you name the provider that is in health care should pay attention and engage with their trade or associations with our legislators. So at the end of the day, the Right. legislation is written. Look, everyone’s trying. In my heart to do the right thing, which is to patient care at an affordable cost and accessible by everyone. And for providers, it’s ultimately to allow providers to be providers. All those folks that I just named off. They’re not administrators. They’re not folks that sit there and went to school to document everything and and work on a computer. They went to school to care for patients and to make their lives better. How do we create legislation and a regulatory environment that allows them to sell in that? That, to me is probably the biggest thing that everybody should be worried about because, you know, like I said in the stroke of a pen, how you practice the patients that you see, the amount of payments that they make, the access to you as a provider could change instantly. And so I think that’s where the focus has to be. Everyone needs to be focused on.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, it’s a great call out, Nim. And it’s hard. You know, I mean, administrations change and and you know, who’s going to be the next one? And the musical chairs and consistency is a challenge. I mean, what what would your advice be to the leaders listening to this today? How can your focus area become an actionable thing for them? And I’d say for all of us. Right. I mean, it’s not just can say them, it’s all of us.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Yeah, that’s a great question. And here’s what I would say. Number one, let’s make sure that the two most important parts of health care are at the table. One is the patient, 2 is the provider, include them, get invites from them, have them be part of the conversation. Make them a part of the solution. That’s at the end of the day, who were striving to make their lives easier. Right.. So make sure they’re at the table. Two, don’t overcomplicate things. Health care is complicated as it is. Let’s try to simplify things. People’s lives are extremely busy nowadays. The majority of the decisions in U.S. households are being made by the female in the house and she is busy. She’s the CEO of her home. She’s the CEO over a company. She’s the CEO of her family. There is a lot on her plate. She’s probably taking care of elders. Her parents or certainly her kids and her husband and her significant other. Our job as health care providers and legislators is to make her life easier and ultimately make the patient’s life easier. So that’s what I would say to all of our leaders. Please don’t make legislation in a vacuum. Make legislation that ultimately provides better care and includes those folks that are actually part of the system. That’s those nurses, pharmacies and peace physicians and everyone else in that ecosystem. That’s my biggest advice.
Saul Marquez:
Great, great advice name. And you know, the one thing that comes to mind and I don’t by any stretch of the imagination expect an answer that gives the complete solution. But, you know, I just I just got back from Europe and just talking to some of the folks out there and the payer system and how things are done, like what can we do about cost, man? I mean, why what’s on your mind about cost and doing better there?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
I’ve had an opportunity to spend some time in Canada and Europe and and looking at their health care systems. And, you know, there’s a lot of opinions, right, Saul. Oh, there’s your system is the Right. system or the Canadian system is the Right. system or the US system. Look, every one of those systems and eco systems have something that’s great and something that can be improved. I think our job as you’re redefining the US health care system is to take the best of all of those. What’s working in those countries that we can take in and implement in the US I think is extremely important as we go forward. And so my take on this is how do we reduce costs? First thing I think is we need to be looking at the waste that’s in our system. You know, there’s a statistic and I can’t quote the actual study, but I think physicians spend over 70 billion dollars a year in administration and building services. Can we reduce that burden? Can we provide them with an easier way to build for their services and take that cost out so we can actually reduce overall health care costs? I think that’s the biggest thing is, is let’s look at all of the waste that’s occurring in our system. Take that out. I think that will translates to some some better cost structures. You know, I can sit there and get into details about how the reimbursement structure looks and all of that. But in my opinion, I think it’s a lot of simple things, a lot of low hanging fruit that we can go after. So I think that’s one. Second is let’s make sure that we’re defining true care by metrics that actually can be impacted by the provider. So many times, again, if we start to define things in a vacuum, we start to define things in an idealistic way. And when it really gets to the field, into the system, and when we’re starting to execute that, you realize you really can’t execute it because it’s unrealistic. So to make sure that how we define care in terms of outcomes and measures that our providers can actually execute, they can actually drive better outcomes. So I think those are the two things that run at the top, my head that I think we ought to be worried about waste and making sure that how we measure a performance of a provider is realistic, that they can actually attain.
Saul Marquez:
Some great, great ideas there, Nim. And, you know, again, appreciate your your thought on it. And I think it’s great that you have the global perspective, having spent time in Canada and Europe to really inform of what what else is out there. So I’d love to focus in on McKesson and the Mart that you you’re working on. This is a great opportunity for you to educate listeners on what you guys do and also talk to us about how you guys are making a difference by doing things differently.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity to say that. You know, McKesson Corp.. Believe it or not, is a hundred and eighty five year old organization. It is, as I say, the central nervous system of health care at any given moment, at any given minute. Mckesson is touching lives every single day, whether it’s through critical operations that help the businesses of our providers or directly to the lives of their patients. So whether it’s our distribution arm, whether it’s our US oncology arm, whether it’s our pharmacy channels like Health Mart in the US, whether it’s our Canadian operations and our European operations, our medical surgical business. We are touching health care on a lot of different fronts. And every day our folks wake up with one thing in mind is how do we make that patient care better and better? One patient, one product, one partner at a time. And that’s that’s really where our focus is. Health Mart, as you mentioned, is a part of McKesson. That is our independent pharmacy franchise in the US. It’s a little over 5000 stores and all of them are independently owned by the owners and many of them are pharmacies themselves. And they just do a stellar job there in the community. They’ve been there for years in many cases. Many of them are generational owners. So the grandfather, the father, the son or the mom, the mother and the daughter or whatever the case is, they’re owning those pharmacists and they provide pharmaceutical care in their communities. So when you look at McKesson as a whole, we are in the back. We’re behind the scenes in many instances, but we know full well all 70000 team members at McKesson that everything that we do every minute impacts someone’s life in health care. And that’s a powerful, powerful responsibility that we have.
Saul Marquez:
That’s really interesting. I had no idea the company was one hundred and eighty years old. And I always thought about McKesson as like software, you know. That’s kind of I don’t I don’t know if that’s where people typically pigeonhole McKesson, but that’s what I thought and is very, very interesting to hear about this and to know the impact that you guys have in the pharmacy benefits space. And so you guys are doing some really unique things. Love to hear from you, Nim what maybe a setback that you guys had and what you learned from it make you guys better.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Yeah. You know, I think I wouldn’t say a setback, but I do think that health care right now is impacting every part of the world and certainly in the US. And the biggest challenges that we have right now in the US is, is drug prices. And we as McKesson continue to ensure that we are operationally as efficient as possible, that we’re developing technology or we’re developing services that ultimately help patients obtain their medications, have access to their medications through their pharmacies, through their physicians. So everything that we’re doing, whether it’s it’s continuing to operate our distribution centers in the utmost efficient manner with the highest level of compliance on all regulations and requirements, whether it’s providing our pharmacies with the right services so they can keep the health of their patient at the highest level. So we keep the health of their business at the highest level. And so that’s what we’re continuing to do and we continue to put our efforts on. So we become a part of the solution and we are what we believe is a part of the solution, which is providing patients with the needed care needed pharmaceuticals that they need at the right time, at the right access.
Saul Marquez:
And so no doubt. Right. I mean, there’s been an increased focus on price and markups and things like that. So it’s great to hear about some of the efforts that you guys have and in mitigating that. What about the other side? Right.. We talked about a challenge, but what about one of the most proud experiences or moments that your division McKesson has experienced? What is it?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Yeah. You know Saul, I’m going to give you one that was most recent, in fact. We just made a press release last week, but we support the US Oncology Network as part of the McKesson organization, this oncology research. As you know, cancer continues to be a deadly condition, a condition that impacts many, many, many lives in the US. So we just in Chicago was the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting this past weekend and investigators working with the U.S. Oncology Network, the U.S. and Healthy Research and McKesson. We actually presented 60 different research abstracts on sarcoma, non small cell metastatic lung cancer and so on and so forth. Ultimately to provide the right information through our systems, through our research channel, and then bring that back into the ecosystem so we can make some good decisions on therapy for four patients that have cancer. And subsequently, how do we start to use that for research to try to address some of the needs of cancer patients? We just released that. I think it’s a big deal. As a practitioner myself and that day, you know, when you bring together multiple entities in the health care systems to try to address serious issues like cancer, I think we will ultimately get the right solution.
Saul Marquez:
That’s some great work there, Nim. And so how did you guys come up with that? I mean, to even begin there and focus on education there.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
The US oncology network, which is. The Mckesson family, we helped almost twelve – thirteen hundred independent physicians deliver that value based care, that integrated care to patients. And what we’re doing is we’re working with them to ensure that what they’re seeing in the marketplace, what they’re seeing with their patients, that we can actually take that information and then bring it back into the broader eco system. We believe that working with various entities, whether it’s pharma, whether it’s oncology practices, whether it’s other parts of healthcare like health systems and things that nature, you know, bringing that those practices together and bringing that information together in, in our opinion, ultimately will get us to the right place in terms of making the right decisions for health care. So it’s a big deal for us. We also participate in clinical trials with pharma. So again, how do we help pharma have access to the right patients? Right. providers so they can conduct those clinical trials. We have somewhere in the range of seventy five seventy six thousand patients that are supported in an over sixteen hundred clinical trials right now working with pharma. Again, what we’re trying to do is to basically say, listen, how do we bring providers, pharmacies, patients in other parts of the system together to ultimately make the right decision and to grab the right data so we can make that right decision? I think that’s the magic of McKesson, is we touch a lot of facets of health care and we have the ability to bring all of that together. So that’s very exciting. As you can tell, I get very passionate about this because at the end of the day, this really is what we went into healthcare for.
Saul Marquez:
Love it. Yeah, it’s a it’s an exciting thing to work on. And so if you were to pick any exciting project or focus that you guys are working on to tell the listeners more about, what would it be?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Well, we have one coming up in June. We have something called ideas share. Let’s go around the same theme of bringing providers and folks together. So in June, we have a big conference call. Ideas share 2019. We’ll have three, four thousand people there of pharmacies, owners, customers, patients to bring together and then have a dialogue about health care. Have a dialogue about what Health Mart can do for you. We’ll have a dialogue about what McKesson can do. And then we also bring in partners outside of McKesson that are in the health care world. So we give them access to those same providers and pharmacists and patients and the exact nature. I think it’s very exciting when we can get. Like I said, people that are experiencing the health care system together and start to debate ideas, start to debate issues and hopefully come out with solutions that we can go execute.
Saul Marquez:
That’s really exciting, Nim. And so it’s in June. You have a date and maybe a shout out for the listeners, maybe a place where they could go check it out.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Yeah. Then last week of June 27 through the 30th, it’s in Orlando. And if there are any folks that are interested that are wanting to go. You can reach out to us at McKesson and at Health mart and we’ll send you all of the appropriate registration documents or things that nature.
Saul Marquez:
Awesome. And a name if you want. And we could also within the show notes of today’s podcast, leave a link for them to easily access all of that. You just have to give it to me and we’ll plug it in afterwards.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. That’ll be great.
Saul Marquez:
So really cool stuff, Nim. And there’s nothing like the power of getting stakeholders together to share ideas and best practices. So kudos to you and your team for putting ideas share together for for working with the U.S. oncology network and really doing a big thing and bringing best practices to the pharmacy and the way we tackle these things. So awesome work, man.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Thank you. Thank you very, very much. Believe me, I just get to talk about it real in the stores and in our practices and and that are taking care of patients every single day. So I just have the honor of being able to talk about that for them.
Saul Marquez:
Representing. And so, we’re here at the Lightning Round. I’ve got a couple questions for you. Name followed by your favorite book that you’d recommend to the listeners. You ready?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Sounds great. Let’s do it.
Saul Marquez:
All right. What’s the best way to improve health care outcomes?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Focus on providing low cost and competing care.
Saul Marquez:
What is the biggest mistake or pitfall to avoid?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Over complicating health care.
Saul Marquez:
How do you stay relevant as an organization despite constant change?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Work and share as a team.
Saul Marquez:
What is one area of focus that drives everything in your company?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
To improve care in every setting. As I said, one product, one partner and one patient at a time.
Saul Marquez:
Love that. And these two, Nim are more on a personal note for the listeners to get to know you. What’s your number one health habit?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
My number one health habit is I am a avid orange theory. Oh, n and I go there two to three times a week.
Saul Marquez:
That’s awesome.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
I watch my my app on that. Everyday it’s a great program and keeps me active and keeps me healthy.
Saul Marquez:
That’s that’s a good one and definitely a metric base. There’s no way to hide how you’re doing. It’s all on the screen, right?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I’m a little bit of a Taipei also, so I compete with myself pretty good.
Saul Marquez:
I love it. Yeah. I did it a couple of times, Nim and it’s pretty intense. I gotta admit, it’s pretty intense.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
It is. It is. My wife and I both do it so it becomes us stay healthy and date night at the same time.
Saul Marquez:
That’s awesome, man. That’s a that’s a good way to do it. That’s a good way to do it. And this last one is, what is your number one success habit?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
I wake up quite early and sort of start the day early. I’ve done that for years. And, you know, I just hate when you’re behind the eight ball. You’re like, you’re behind the eight ball. So you get in bed, get the day started and start making a difference.
Saul Marquez:
Love that man. Powerful. And what book would you recommend to the listeners?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
You know, that’s a great question. I know there’s a lot of books that that are great. But I have to pick one from my high school days. And that’s To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. You know, there’s a it’s a classic, right. the world. But I think we forget about books like that. What a fantastic way of showing life’s lessons and providing life’s lessons. Right. done. Don’t judge a book by its cover. And as one of the individuals in the book, Atticus, for me, that that is the epitome of how we should all act. Right. courage is not letting the odds stop you, right. Doing the right thing should always guide you. And so I think that’s a great book. I hope high schools continue to have that as part of their reading list because I think there’s a lot to learn from that book.
Saul Marquez:
And a great one to resuscitate for everybody listening. And if you haven’t read it, one definitely pick up. Great recommendation.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Thank you. Thank you.
Saul Marquez:
So, Nim. Incredible. I mean, I really enjoyed our time together. It’s never long enough. But here at the end, I’d love if you could just leave the listeners with a call to action. A closing thought and the best place where they could continue the conversation.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Well, thanks for that opportunity. First of all, thank you again for this time. Here’s what I will leave you with. And whether it’s in health care, I know we spoke a lot about health care, but in life in general, I’m a big baseball fan.
Saul Marquez:
What’s your team?
Nimesh Jhaveri:
I hate to say it, but I’m a New York Yankees fan. I know that there’s all sorts of reactions. But I do hope that.
Saul Marquez:
We won’t hold it against you, Nim.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
I grew up about 40 minutes outside of the Bronx in New Jersey, and I’ve been a New York Yankees fan for all my life. So I love saying quotes from baseball players. And and one of the greatest baseball players is Jackie Robinson. And he said it the best Right.. He said, look, life is not a spectator sport. Going to spend the whole life in the grandstands just watching what goes on, in my opinion. You’re wasting your life. And to me, that is the epitome of everything that we should all be doing, as is. Get out of the grandstands. Come on. Let’s go make a difference. Let’s go make an impact on people’s lives. In this case, in health care, I think Jackie said it the best. So I will leave you all with that thought. And then lastly, I would love to continue the conversation with any of you in Saul with yourself as well. I’m available through all sorts of means. You can contact me through LinkedIn or through my Twitter handle, which is NimJ. N I M J or shortly. My email at and very 13 at Gmail dot com or something by McKesson email, which is nimesh.jhaveri@McKesson.com. Again, thank you.
Saul Marquez:
No, it’s a pleasure name and and folks take that message to heart. You know, life is not a spectator sport. If you’re listening to this, the likelihood is high that you’re a leader in this business and in this field that we’ve chosen health care and so. Nim, T=thank you so much. And folks, listen and get out there and play.
Nimesh Jhaveri:
Saul, thank you so much. And to all the listeners. Thank you for your time. Hope we continue the conversation. Thank you again.
Thanks for listening to the Outcomes Rocket podcast. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.outcomesrocket.com for the show notes, resources, inspiration and so much more.
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